Local GIS-shop Azavea opened last week applications for organizations interested in participating in the company’s first ever Summer of Maps fellowship program.

The fellowship will match two post-secondary GIS students with local nonprofits who need help with geospatial data analysis. Organization applications are due this Friday, March 16.

In addition to organizing the fellowship, Azavea is offering the two selected students a desk at Azavea headquarters in Callowhill, mentorship from the Azavea crew, and, of course, money. The stipend for the 12-week fellowship is $5000, or a little more than $400 a week.

The student application form will open March 21, 2012 and close April 2, 2012. Azavea aims to announce its selections by April 16., though it admits on its website that since this is the first time they are running this program, the fellowship schedule could change a bit between now and May, when the fellowship is scheduled to begin.

If you’re a nonprofit with geospatial needs or a GIS student in need of paid summer plans, more information on the fellowship is available here.

Blair Souder of ShiftmyGift.com. Photography by Ryan Donnell

Say that for Christmas, you didn’t want gifts. Instead, you’d rather have friends and family donate to a cause of you’re choosing.

A Chester County startup aims to be the solution, with its ShiftMyGift.com.

Launched in August by Blair Souder after being moved by a hiking trip in poor swaths of Nepal, the site acts like an online gift registry for nonprofits, in which users highlight philanthropic efforts they support. Others can make donations on their behalf, from which Shift My Gift takes a $1.49 processing fee and makes 4.75 percent ‘grant’ to the Network for Good — the group through which the donations are made – as Entrepreneur reported. USA Today has also covered the project.

Through a partnership with Guidestar, some 1.8 million nonprofits are listed, including large international organizations like the Heifer Foundation to growing groups like Back on My Feet to smaller, local ones like CareerWadrobe.

The site is a socially-minded LLC with intentions of becoming a certified B Corporation, said spokeswoman Paige Wolf.

Blair, who lives in Lincoln University, Pa., was a high-ranking marketing executive with GE before leaving in 2009 to spend more time with his family. Brother Kirk, who is involved in the venture but lives in Topanga, Calif., has been held a variety of branding roles, including starting his own firm.

This event coverage was written by Liz Cies, a spokeswoman for Huntingdon Valley-based email marketing firm AWeber, and edited by Technically Philly.

For the second year in a row, the staff at AWeber Communications put down the keyboards and picked up the gamepads to participate in the nationwide Extra Life video game marathon.

This past Saturday at 12 p.m., the AWeber game changers team locked themselves in AWeber’s game room to play video games in support of kids at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The AWeber Game Changers’ fundraising efforts – including outreach to family and friends, a three-week bake sale and a full company match – yielded a total of $5,700 in donations, placing the team in the top 25 tier of Extra Life teams nationwide. Donations can still be made here.

“One of our five core values at AWeber is, ‘Don’t take ourselves too seriously and have fun.’ What’s even better is when we can do that while also doing good for our local community,” said Hunter Boyle, AWeber senior business development manager and marathon participant. “This past Saturday we were able to do both, thanks to an enormous outpouring of support from our friends,
families, colleagues and peers.”

Extra Life, an annual 24-hour video game event that raises money for 170 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals nationwide, was founded in memory of Victoria (Tori) Enmon. All funds raised stay within the participants’ communities to ensure that every dollar is used to help local kids.

In total, the fourth annual Extra Life event raised more than $1.1 million – more than the event’s first three years combined.

Fast Company recently interviewed Tammy Tibbetts, a 25-year-old College of New Jersey graduate who launched She’s the First, a nonprofit helping to send girls in the developing world to school. Watch the interview below.

Donate laptops to Nonprofit Technology Resources during Philly Tech Week and beyond.

Nonprofit Technology Resources, which refurbishes computers, offers training and workforce development for low-income Philadelphians, is hosting a laptop donation drive during Philly Tech Week.

NTR is accepting laptops with at least a Pentium 4 processer, which includes just about any laptop purchased since 2001. Donations to the nonprofit are tax deductible and all laptops are wiped clean of any remaining personal data, information or files. NTR can accommodate large donations from established groups and organizations.

There is greater interest and need for laptop donations to connect lower-income Philadelphians than ever, says NTR founder Stan Pokras, as computing moves away from the desktop.

While the  nonprofit is located at 1524 Brandywine Street in the Spring Garden neighborhood, laptop donations can be brought to the remaining Philly Tech Week lunchtime series events at WHYY from 12-1 p.m. today, tomorrow and Friday. If you are interested in donating otherwise, contact us or NTR. Find all PTW events listed here.

In March, Technically Philly reported on NTR budget concerns, which are on-going.

[Full Disclosure: NTR is a former TP advertiser]

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mmy Moon.

Until midnight tonight, web developers have the chance to support children leaving homes of domestic abuse.

The Northern Home for Children, the historic Manayunk orphanage, is partnering with marketing shop Red Tettemer to raise money for their Duffels4Digitnity program, which accepts donations of any amount to purchase duffel bags of clothes, toothbrushes and stuffed animals. The bags are given to children, from infants to teenagers, who are relocated to foster care during late night domestic disputes — a more recurrent problem than we might want to imagine.

Alcatel-Lucent, the Paris-based telecommunications giant with offices in Murray Hill, N.J. and staff in Doylestown, has jumped into the fray with their “Duffels4Dignity4Devs,” a pledge to donate one dollar for every developer who signs up for their Open API Service. The platform gives access to network and third party technology through bundled API solutions without cost.

Until tonight at midnight, Alcatel-Lucent will donate $1 for every developer who signs up. If 500 sign up, the company will kick in $500 plus an additional $1,000 to break the orphanage’s goal of $5,000.

To sign up, users will need to give their name and e-mail address.

Mike Maney, a director at Alcate-Lucent, says that the free sign up will interest most developers anyway.

“We just recently acquired ProgrammableWeb and the community was built and managed by the former community manager for Sourceforge,” he wrote Technically Philly in an e-mail. “Plus, [the platform includes] tools like a killer dashboard that let’s developers view the ‘health’ of their app in one place.”

Students watching video on Nov. 9 from the International Space Station inside the Salvation Army's new Target Media Center in West Philadelphia.

Somewhere someone once said that technology makes the world smaller.

Yesterday, inside its West Philadelphia Corps Community Center, the Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia opened a Target Media Center, a renovated 20- by 30-foot multi-purpose room crafted into a library and youth theater.

One of its most dynamic features is the incorporation of a teleconferencing system designed to connect students with virtual field trips — like faraway zoos, aquariums and, yes, as depicted above, space stations. Students in West Philadelphia, many perhaps with far fewer opportunities than others their age, will be able to teleconference with astronauts.

“The technology and the new performing arts space opens up the imagination and allows students to express themselves in different ways,” Ingrid Broadnax, director of foundation and government relations for the Salvation Army’s Philadelphia branch, says in a press release.

The� sprucing up of 5501 Market Street came at the hand of a $25,000 grant, part of a national $1 million gift that Target donated to the Salvation Army in 2007 to revitalize the organization�s libraries, media centers and educational facilities across the country. Allentown had a similar unveiling.

�We�re delighted that Target identified the Salvation Army as the organization that can make this project a reality,� Broadnax says.

The media center’s most innovative feature is likely that distance learning program built on the back of teleconferencing equipment and free software programs, but the technologies are also meant to be used in virtual visitation sessions, giving youth the opportunity to connect with family members they couldn’t before, because of incarceration, distance or other circumstances.

The local funds also went to purchasing books and a small stage for youth theater, among other programs.

In 1879, the first Salvation Army group in the United States began in Philadelphia. Follow the regional group on Twitter here.

Below watch a recent promotional video from the group.

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

My rabbit ears don’t work anymore.

Yes, the federal government spent $2 billion and 13 years to finalize the nation’s transition from analog to crisper digital television transmission, and yes, much to the delight of Philebrity, the FCC said the Philadelphia region was responsible for the fourth most complaint calls to a hotline dedicted to the transition.

The Associated Press reports that Comcast’s new $1.5 billion debt issue received an investment grade rating on from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. The rating was “BBB+,” with a positive outlook for the possibility of further upgrade. It’ll be a two-part sale, according to Reuters. To the markets!

But, look, it ain’t Comcast’s fault. In some coverage areas, the cable giant launched a “rapid response team” to perform same-day installations for those who still needed a digital TV solution. ‘Course that didn’t help resolve the need for the FCC to send its own additional support here to help viewers who still hadn’t made the transition.

I mean, people lost 6ABC and WHYY, for goodness sake.

Maybe that’s why, when Comcast filed comments to the FCC for a proposed national broadband plan, part of their advice was to undergo a massive education program.

After the jump, porn and children’s shows get a buffer, a partnership with T-Mobile, video of Comcast playing nicely with children, among others.

In order of importance for your ease:

• The Consumerist reports that it will add “blocks of dummy channels” between family shows and adult pay-per-view programming to continue the illusion of innocent youth.
• Phandroid reports on rumors that T-Mobile may be working with Comcast to launch a 4G mobile network, beginning with not Philadelphia. The buzz is that it would launch in the D.C. and Baltimore metro area.
• Multichannel News reports that Comcast’s top content acquisition executive gave a message of “consistency” for on-demand video at the closing of the OnDemand Summit held in Center City Wednesday. That message was advice to help monetize the product.
• Corporate blog Comcast Voices shares news that employees participating in the city’s Big Brothers Big Sisters� program made a year-end visit to North Philadelphia’s Fairhill Elementary School, Comcast’s partner in the John Alchin Beyond School Walls program, for a party with their “littles.”

When there is just too much Comcast news to follow, the Comcast Roundup will be there to fill your every Comcast desire or fantasy.

Updated: added grant details @ 4:35 p.m.6/16/09

It just might take a miracle to help lead at-risk Philadelphia teens away from the obstacles that have become something of a cliche in the urban education saga.

It will take a miracle or, perhaps, youth organizations that share information with each other through a sophisticated network of information sharing technologies.

That’s what NPower PA does.

The Center City organization fundraises for, organizes, implements and maintains IT for nonprofits that can benefit but don’t have the capital to do so on their own.

In January, this six-year-old group, one of 11 in the national NPower Network, completed perhaps its most ambitious project. After winning the grant in July 2007, NPower PA began integrating a collaborative data collection system in four communities — three in Philly and one in Chester — in the hopes of helping those young people better navigate the pitfalls they face.

The data collection can seem impressive.

It means in the course of a teen’s trek from school to a variety of participating programs, an ID card can give an administrator access to his school grades and attendance, family contact information, food allergies and more. The idea is that when a student walks into, say, a neighborhood rec center, organizers will be able to know what his grades look like, how to better serve him, engage him and, ideally, help him make smart choices.

A miracle it’s not, but such information sharing is one more tool, spokesman Anthony Pisapia says, in helping kids make those decisions.

The initiative, which targets students from 12 to 18 and was funded by $250,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation‘s Youth Development Initiative, is just one of the more recent programs from NPower.

They’ve helped the city’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity build more homes, Girls Inc. help more girls and MANNA feed more people. For these and others, NPower creates affordable, packaged solutions that meet the necessities of in-need nonprofits. For some its a new Web site with the ability for supporters to donate online or other features. For others, its cost-effective IT Help desk services or database management. For all, Pisapia says, it’s about innovation.

They can make legacy systems more efficient or otherwise help nonprofits save more money and bring more of it in. That means they can do more of whatever it is they do.

Since its 2003 formation with 30 member organizations, NPower PA now serves more than 330, and has worked with nearly double that through its existence. More than 100 corporations and foundations have joined the William Penn Foundation and Rohm and Haas Company in funding the organization. In 2008, NPower PA brought in more than $730,000. The NPower Network was launched in Seattle by support from Microsoft.

Contact NPower about an assessment or otherwise collaborating.

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

They’re going to incubate profitable good works.

That’s much the angle of GoodCompany Ventures, which opened its Philadelphia Naval Yard Business Center offices with a ribbon-cutting ceremony highlighted by appearances from Mayor Michael Nutter and Chuck Lacy, a former president of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, yesterday.

All the startups they take in will be for-profit and looking to make a difference or two.

Yesterday, the incubator was also welcoming its inaugural 2009 class of “social entrepreneurs,” including the following: Cyrus-XP, which focuses on advancing the management and delivery of healthcare; CalendarFly, a single source scheduling solution for families (for a test drive, use “student for username and password), and VolunteerBIG.com, a philanthropic social network that was gunning for grant money earlier this year.

GoodCompany aims to provide guidance and support to those for-profit startups that want to tackle large, unmet social needs. Like others, the incubator will offer those accepted training, mentoring, administrative and other pro-bono services. The new effort is co-founded by Resources for Human Development, a social finance firm and Murex Investments, an equity fund backed by leading financial institutions — both of which are based (barely) in Tioga — in addition to other business support.

At yesterday’s event, Lacy, the former Ben & Jerry’s president who is now president of the Vermont-based social capital firm Barred Rock Fund, addressed the attendees, as did Stephen Goodman, a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis, according to a press release from the incubator.

GoodCompany is sponsored by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, the Center City love child of the city and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce that promotes economic developing in town, Trellist Marketing, the Wilmington, Del. Web marketer and the Wharton School of Business.